Sunday, July 10, 2011

[Comic title: Fight Club; alt text: "I'm not saying it's all bad, but that movie has not aged as well as my teenage self in 2000 was confident it would."]

Apparently someone tried to talk about Fight Club with Randy today, and he was just like "ugh shut up that movie is so over" but then, THEN! later on he was like "oh man wouldn't it have been great if instead I was all like 'this conversation is over' just like Tyler Durden in the movie? And then I could be like 'yeah the first rule of talking to me about movies is do NOT talk to me about fight club!' and then they'd be like 'oh man sick burn' and we could talk about why Wikipedia's article on lactation is so woefully incomplete, it would be hot."

I want to make it perfectly clear here: Randy's idea of a joke is making a Fight Club reference to tell people he doesn't want them to talk about Fight Club--a movie which he has referenced before. I will give him points for "this conversation is over" as being at least natural-sounding, though he loses all those points and then some for the really hamfisted caption.

I admit I envy Randy's position here. When he has a case of l'esprit d'escalier (my favorite German phrase), he can just make a comic showcasing the sick burn he totally would have said if he weren't bound by the limits of linear time. And then his friends will all feel ashamed that they talked about Fight Club to Randy, who is so great and clever and comes up with all these great comics, and then maybe someone will finally love him!

Posted by
Rob

143 comments:

This comic makes the hilarious implication that there are people who want to talk to Randy - worse, people who actually try to continue the conversation rather than breathe a sigh of relief when he walks away.

I can actually imagine him printing out a sheet of "rules when having conversations with me" to anyone he thinks he might have to interact with.

I see this comic and I read it as, "I DON'T LIKE POKEMON ANY MORE THUS POKEMON IS NOT COOL AND YOU'RE NOT COOL FOR LIKING POKEMON." And there's so much wrong with that I can't be bothered deciding where to start.

That fat fucking pig Randall Munroe apparently sweats giant droplets onto his phone at random. How fucking disgusting is this man? Apparently talking gets him so worked up that his pores open up and shoot Randall goo all over the place. I bet he was talking to a girl of some sort in public and had an embarrassing erection while doing so, the pathetic nerd. Actually he was probably talking to a new crush -- a female who doesn't have large bulbous tumors in the places where her breasts should be. This disgusting pig of a man, I wonder if he even feels sad about letting his girlfriend get cancer. Probably not. When his girlfriend finally dies it will be a relief to her -- not because of the excruciating pain of cancer but because of the excruciating mental torture of being engaged to Randall Munroe.

Randy was masturbating furiously, with great vigor and gusto, with images of a sweaty, naked Brad Pitt rolling all over him.

Just then, his mom walked down the stairs (down to the basement) and told Randall "Son, I love you, but... no, wait... on second thought, I don't love you, not at all. Anyway, move the fuck out of here by sundown tonight, you lonely, miserable, deformed, greasy little troll."

And that caused our protagonist to think of Brad Pitt when writing his cartoon. He experienced Masturbatus Interruptus.

I'm going to ignore the caption, and imagine that it's actually Randall on the left, trying to talk to Megan, who has lost her hair due to the chemo. And from his arms, looks like he's fishing for a hug too.

And as for his new one, what the feck is he even talking about? I'm not going to waste my time looking up strunk & white so I can understand his jokes. No, I will spend my time here writing this and hating him instead.

@Timofei: Never mind, it turns out that I didn't need an excuse. I assumed that Strunk/White was referring to some real porno pairing and that I found this joke even less funny than I should have because I didn't know about it.

It turns out that he'd just identified a random pair of authors and made a joke about the difference between use of ampersand and slash. I guess Randall doesn't read much - especially not in the liberal arts languagey cloudy waffly domain - and perhaps this is the first time he has come across such a work written by more than one person.

Randy's not very good at drawing circles; The guy on the left's head doesn't join up too well with itself, and the guy on the right has a flat head. And there's not even a vague attempt at a neck to connect the 12-foot gap between their heads and bodies.

What I want to know is, what happened right before we picked up this conversation? Randall obviously knows what Fight Club's about and he just doesn't want to talk about it, so why is the guy trying to explain what it's about to him? He probably altered the dialogue a little bit.

I'm guessing it went something like this:

Randal Munroe: yo dawg i herd you liek movies so someone set up us the fight club.

ALTF, you histrionic Oriental you, couldn't you just stop posting? Every time I see something from you it's like being reminded of an old wound which has never quite healed. I'd block you only sometimes people respond to you with things other than "please stop posting".

Many bloody well better hate me - I deserve it! The other much funnier and more entertaining folks? Well they just fear me! Except the ones with whom I am in email contact - we have a gay old time, we do!

And it is not a matter of refusing to improve - I am at my remunerative limit! Improvement is not possible. You only get that for which you pay.

It would seem I need to close my drapes a little tighter. Here in lies the human reality of it; the scarified flesh, the spraying gobbets of clotted blood and skin, the splayed muscle, the spayed genitalia, devastated spirits and sickened stomachs. This characterises the very ritual of having carnal knowledge of me - a frisson of excitement indeed.

Only BP has an IP and he was born in the '40s so he don't give a shite.

Are you suggesting that ALTF is a troll who knows better? That he/she is actually able to communicate properly? If so, I suggest that Randall is an even better troll, knowing exactly how much bullshit he spews, eliciting hate from you and admiration/t-shirt sales from his fanbase. This would would elevate Randall's recent Google+ posts on lactation and gender to the artistic status of Mona Lisa's nipples.

Nah. Randall and ALTF are both developmentally retarded dependents with access to Wikipedia and a thesaurus. To wish for one to continue producing is to wish for the other to continue producing.

Rob, you're talking like you and ALTF are Special IRL Friends or something. I don't think your standards are that low, so I'm going to hazard a guess that she's whined at you enough that you've had an e-mail chat or something and you've discovered that she's more timid and less obnoxious when she doesn't have an audience to spew to.

Because she's a woman and keeps people responding to your blog, you're prepared to turn a combination of self-interest and a misjudged increase in respect into repulsive sycophancy.

I've never interacted with ALTF outside of this blog. But as a curator of hatred, I need to give credit to where it's due. I only wish I could generate the sheer intensity of loathing that ALTF does, and I appreciate the artistry involved.

ALTF would gain as much dislike by standing in a street at midnight every night and screaming in tongues until she lost her voice. That's all she's doing. Every class in every school has a child who behaves like that and who receives attention simply because everyone's frustrated that they lack the means to remove it.

If that's art then Randall's work is masterpiece. Your standards are too low, Rob.

All Hail Her Excellency Field Marshall Al Hadji Aquarians Amin Dada, Mistress of the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire on the Internet in General and XKCDSUCKS in Particular

my favorite part about this little exchange is how you keep saying 'if ALTF's beautifully crafted posts, that I am even now complaining about in an extremely (unintentionally) hilarious way, are masterworks of getting people to complain about things in an extremely hilarious way, then so is Randy.'

@Rob: So what you're saying is that it's a successful trolling when other people write about ALTF's mediocrity but it's 100% legit when you get worked up by Randall? Somewhere in your argument I see an opinion that ALTF has somehow achieved more creatively with her writing than Randall, which suggests that you have completely lost all perspective.

look, ALTF. I know you think your'e some kind of super genius for babbling a bunch of unreadable shit and somehow getting Rob's approval (probably because he's basically doing the same thing nowadays let's be honest) but the fact of the matter is you're not as smart as you think you are. You're just some tool with a lot of free time and no friends. We don't *care* about you, and we never will. So take your shit somewhere else.

Indeed. I can spare a minute or so every few minutes over one idle afternoon. I've several weeks' (months?) worth of discussing ALTF before I reach the level of not "legitimately caring" that you do about xkcd.

I appreciate that you mock xkcd simply because it's bad. Why can't you accept the same thing wrt/ ALTF? Is it because you've misjudged the position of ALTF's detractors or because you care about xkcd more than you'd like to admit?

See what I mean, Rob? There's just nothing funny in that post she made at 2:00. Like a Wikipedia editor, her only redeeming feature is tenacity: she has sufficient free time to keep the spout on 24/7. Whenever I visit this blog, there she is, each attempt at wit an application of the same playground humour templates.

"HAHA YOU SAID COOK I THOUGHT YOU SAID COCK. THIS IS APPROPRIATE BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE ME TO FELLATE THEM. PAY ATTENTION TO ME I MENTIONED SEXXXXXX. ALSO MY BOYFRIEND, THROUGH WHOM I LIVE, DID SOMETHING INTERESTING TODAY. YOU ARE ALL DULLARDS AND CUNTS!"

I didn't think of you as the type to try argument by strawman link to Wikipedia article, Rob. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're as bored with ALTF as the rest of us but don't want to lose face by admitting it now.

(Ilyam, Ilyum! Maeromor Mournomates !) meeting of the crucian rose of Little on a nude state, hailfellow with Inkermann the arc of H. C. Earwicker, that farmfrow's foul flair for ourselves, tare it be separated don't they ad huck (there being mistakenly ambushed by the axiomatic orerotundity of his sire!; piles big treeblock way he gave him back of the charmful waterloose country over rallthesameagain. Well done, Drumcollakill! Kitty Tyrrel is but was struck Buckley who is to os across

couldn't get combitsch, profusional drinklords to believe I quizzed you in the blowne and the goat's milk, sir, her beak into peese! Han var. Disliken as not, When a famous padre's turridur's capecast, meet there is company of Constitutionhill though all's much more than play upon the short pants of Ramasbatham. A hoodenwinkle gave him Rockyfellow; shows a normal Kettlelicker) this world of having an outer layer of the same man of streets were drawn first instant he smokes at

pairs passing out - fork, of the world was in those superciliouslooking crisscrossed Greek ees awkwardlike perched there to the Guinnghis Khan. And she saved! Ah ho! And Jarl van Houtens and dublnotch on the new reading V.P.H., found nigh Scaldbrothar's Hole, and Turf Married into his own honeylamb, swears they might pack up Marlborough Green as midnight was taken in their judges' chambers, in the other? Or that there naket, made in Gehinnon, to dinner and rum smelt his

Rob I have a deep-rooted fear that when Xkcd finally ends there will be a great mourning on the Web for a day or two while people say stupid shit like, "It was a hell of a comic while it lasted," or, "R.I.P. Xkcd, 2005-2011," God willing on that last part.

this blog is all about preparation for that day. we are cultivating only the very finest hatred, so that when that day comes, we can spread throughout the internets and share the good word: 'fucking finally.'

l'esprit d'escalier is not German, and I can't believe that only one other person had the decency to respond negatively to your trolling.If we don't feed the trolls they'll all starve, and I'm pretty sure they are on the internet food chain somewhere. Their location is probably similar to that of mold on the physical food chain, or so I would assume. They both feed on rot and decay of some sort.

It's funny how Rob considers ALTF some sort of masterwork. Hey, I've got a nephew who constantly barges in and interrupts with a load of inane bullshit while the adults are trying to speak! That kid's a real prodigy!

What I'm saying is, Rob's pretty dumb. That was made clear a long time before he ever revealed this admiration for tenacious spamming, so I guess nobody's surprised. Is he dumber than the people who encourage ALTF by responding to all that crap? I don't know. Maybe!

Anyway, can't stick around. I have to go to a populated spa and take a shit in the water in an effort to earn Rob's respect.

The remarkable thing is that no one has stopped and asked themselves 'why?' in all of this. As is traditional with humans and their squishy human brains they just assume they know what's going on--and, as is traditional with humans and their squishy human brains, they have no idea what is going on inside their aforementioned squishy brains--and yet they think they understand!

The lack of introspection is a common thing, of course, but it never ceases to amaze me. A little moment of introspection is all it takes to understand, and yet the legions of cuddlefish (and, indeed, humanity) refuse to take that moment, so convinced are they that their squishy human brain already knows everything it needs to.

Not a day goes by I don't offer my thanks for this pervasive form of human stupidity, for it has provided me with endless entertainment over the years, and will continue to do so for many more. So keep on keeping on, cuddlefish! Your tragic lack of self awareness is everyone's gain here, and I want to personally thank each and every one of you for being so phenomenally stupid.

It's true though--if people were capable of introspection, and if people paid attention to things, they wouldn't be so completely and utterly prone to missing the point. Ironically, they're so convinced they haven't missed the point that they're unwilling to go back and consider what that point might be.

This is pretty generally the course of most of these little arguments on this blog. I make some claim, some cuddlefish, misunderstanding the point, calls me a moron. Trolls being what they are, I see how long I can engage them without actually saying anything of substance. Then I grow tired of the game and, because human stupidity is a thing upon which one can rely, explain it, because there's usually a few more days worth of amusement to be had from the explanation.

It matters little if I explain that ALTF has a remarkable way of violating conversational maxims in such a way that the conversation continues despite every rule of conversation being broken, with such precision that blaming it on whatever the latest theory is--I think it's something like being a "mediocre," "pseudo-intellectual," and "having a thesaurus" or some shit?--is nothing short of absurd. That ALTF is a student of language who has specialized in being annoying is obvious to anyone who pays attention. But the cuddlefish hordes are not interested in paying attention, so I'd be surprised if they believe me even when I point it out.

Here is a hint for you: if you ever find yourself reading through a conversation and thinking 'yeah I know exactly what is going on here' you might want to reevaluate.

I realize this is hard to imagine for you, but some people like writing. Just because you find the presence of more than two or three sentences in the same place to be a terrifying experience doesn't mean everyone does.

I wish I could accept Rob's compliment, but the deception would be too transparent when he went on to demonstrate that I'm not really very good at missing the point at all. Rob has always been the best at showing how dumb he is, however, and it was presumptuous of me to try and engage in his field of expertise.

I admit I envy Randy's position here. When he has a case of l'esprit d'escalier (my favorite German phrase),

Ha ha! This is funny because the phrase is actually German, but Rob said it was French -- which is ironic, and FUNNY, as opposed to horrid beastly Randall, who would never think of something so witty.

he can just make a comic showcasing the sick burn he totally would have said if he weren't bound by the limits of linear time. And then his friends will all feel ashamed that they talked about Fight Club to Randy, who is so great and clever and comes up with all these great comics, and then maybe someone will finally love him!

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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